


Will to Live

by randi2204



Series: Honeymoon Trail [9]
Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Abandonment, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 09:18:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/501918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randi2204/pseuds/randi2204
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Chris hated this.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Will to Live

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** These boys belong to MGM, Mirisch and Trilogy, not to me.

Chris hated this.  He hated this room because it wasn’t Nathan’s clinic.  Instead it was just a room in a boarding house too far away from home.  Hated the looks that Vin and Nathan and now Buck gave him, like he was something fragile that would break if someone breathed too deep around him.  Hated knowing that Ella was just out of reach, down the street, behind the jailhouse door, and that the sheriff would set her free – free! – if he saw fit.  Hated that there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it short of strangling her with his bare hands. 

 

Chris closed his eyes, his hands clenching into fists; he could still feel the slender column of her throat under his fingers as he squeezed…

 

_Wish I’d been able to end it then_ , he thought, and swallowed.   _Right now, gettin’ hanged don’t seem like too high a price to pay…_

 

More than anything, though, he hated that Ella might have killed someone _else_ he lo—cared about.

 

The boarding house room was warm and dark, the lantern turned low.  It threw just enough light so that when Chris glanced toward the other chair, he was just barely able to make out that Nathan had fallen asleep, tilted a bit to one side.  _Man’s worn out,_ he reminded himself.  _Been runnin’ himself ragged tryin’ to keep Ezra…_ He stopped that thought, tried to breathe around the catch in his throat.

 

On the bed Ezra lay gasping, fighting to draw breath despite the hole in his chest, the hole that Ella had put there when she shot him.  It had nearly killed him.  Nearly killed them both.

 

Chris leaned forward a little, took hold of Ezra’s hand where it lay on top of the quilt.  Vin knew – Vin had even told him to do it the first time – but it still felt like something secret, something just between him and Ezra, so he only did this when he was sure that no one else would see.

 

Ezra’s hand felt cool in his, but warmed as he gripped it tight in his own.  “Ezra, you’d best wake up,” he ordered quietly.   “Enough of this layin’ about.”

 

There was no response.  Chris swallowed.  He shouldn’t have expected one, but he still did, every time, because that’s just what Ezra _did_ ; he had a retort for almost everything Chris said, mocking, acid-edged, insightful and _wrong_ in equal measure.

 

His eyes burned – from exhaustion – and he rubbed them with his free hand.  He’d gotten so used to having Ezra in bed next to him while they’d been on this damnable trip, this farce of a honeymoon, he hadn’t even thought about trying to sleep in a different room.  Hell, he hadn’t even _thought_ about sleep for the past few days, not when it felt Ezra was slowly slipping away from them, not when Chris felt so unbearably responsible for it.

 

Which was why he spent all his time in here, until he was as worn as Nathan.  It felt like he was keeping Ezra alive somehow – that his touch, the dreadful, painful hope filling him was what made Ezra draw each heaving breath. He ran his thumb across the back of Ezra’s hand, hoping that it would work.

 

It had to work.

 

_Maybe tonight he’ll wake up…_ He tightened his grasp on Ezra’s hand, relaxed it slightly.  He’d been telling himself that since Ella had shot him, since Nathan had patched him up, because he just couldn’t bear to believe otherwise.

 

_Words,_ he told himself.  _Maybe words’ll keep… wake him up…_

 

“Ezra,” Chris said again, and his voice sounded rusty as an old saw.  He cleared his throat softly, glanced over as Nathan shifted in his sleep at the sound, but didn’t release Ezra’s hand. “I’m not much for words,” he went on, barely a whisper now, “but I reckon this has gotta be said.”  He took a deep breath, let it out slow. “You can’t… you can’t let her win, Ezra.”  He swallowed and tightened his grasp on Ezra’s hand.  “She’s already taken Sarah and Adam away from me… you can’t let her take you, too.”

 

There was more, words stuck in his throat that he simply could not force out.  Then Ezra seemed to take a particularly difficult breath, stomach hollowing with the effort, and Chris’s heart was caught there along with all those words.  He stared at Ezra’s face, pale and damp, and willed him to keep breathing, _just keep breathing_.

 

Ezra’s breaths steadied, still harsh, still slightly out of rhythm, but still _there_.  Chris slumped in the chair.

 

It seemed only a moment later that he caught himself nodding off.  _So tired…_ He didn’t want to let go of Ezra’s hand, and he’d have to if he leaned back in the chair.  Instead, he tilted forward, half lying on the bed, half in the chair, and folded his arms under his head.

 

It wasn’t the same as it had been… before, when they climbed into bed after a day of pretending to be newly wed.  There was none of Ezra’s snide commentary, no biting observations of people they’d met that day… but this was more than he’d had since that last day in the hotel, when he’d been tempted to follow Ezra back to their room and…

 

He kept hold of Ezra’s hand even as he drifted into sleep.

 

He half-woke once, thinking that Ezra’s hand had twitched in his grasp, but he’d imagined that, imagined those graceful fingers twining with his own too many times to believe it was true.

 

“Don’t go,” he breathed, and fell back into a dream where Ezra squeezed his hand tightly.

 

***

August 13, 2012

**Author's Note:**

> Written to fill a [prompt](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/147336.html?thread=6741640#cmt6741640) JoJo left at [ fic_promptly](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/) that I simply couldn't resist... which was what she had planned all along.


End file.
